United States · Stone Carving / Ritual Craft
A'doshle (general term varies by carver/family; fetish figures broadly called stone animal carvings within Zuni tradition)
Small hand-carved stone animal figures, often finished with an inlaid 'heartline' running from mouth to heart and sometimes an offering bundle, carved to hold and channel the spirit of the depicted animal for protection, healing, or hunting.
Risk level: Vulnerable · Not Applicable — the United States is not a State Party to the UNESCO 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage; no US technique can be formally ICH-inscribed regardless of significance.
A multi-stage hand process for turning raw animal hide into soft, supple, smoke-finished buckskin using the animal's own brain matter as the tanning agent, forming the essential material foundation for nearly every other Plains hide craft…
A distinctive Crow beading tradition recognized for its use of overlaid ('spot' or appliqué) stitch combined with bold, large-scale geometric and floral-influenced forms and a characteristic pastel and jewel-tone palette, applied…
A Northern Plains beading tradition of the Blackfeet Nation of Montana, part of the broader Blackfoot Confederacy that also includes the Kainai, Piikani, and Siksika Nations across the border in Alberta, Canada, known for bold geometric…
A combined woodworking, hide, and beadwork craft producing the rigid-backed, richly decorated infant carrier boards used across Southern Plains nations, integrating a wooden frame, brain-tanned hide wrapping, and dense beaded or quilled…
The construction of feathered dance bustles and associated regalia worn in Southern Plains ceremonial and powwow dance, combining regulated eagle-feather handling under federal permit law with beadwork, hide, and dyed-feather decorative…
The hand-hammering (repoussé) of sheet copper into hollow, three-dimensional wind-direction ornaments — roosters, running horses, ships, and other figures — for barns, churches, and civic buildings, a colonial New England tradition dating…
The Dutch windmill millstone dressing tradition — the periodic re-cutting of the furrow pattern on grinding millstones that maintains the cutting efficiency of the Dutch grain windmills (korenmolens).
The Bath stone masonry tradition — the working of oolitic limestone from the quarries around Bath (Box Ground, Corsham Down) to construct and restore the Georgian architecture of Bath, a UNESCO World Heritage City (1987).
The hand-axe extraction of salt blocks from Lake Assal, Africa's lowest point (155 meters below sea level) and one of the saltiest lakes on Earth, by Afar and Issa salt workers of Djibouti's Afar Rift.
The collection, refining, and shaping of native sulfur crystals from the now-defunct Sicilian sulfur mines — the world's primary sulfur source until the 19th century — into decorative objects, mineral sculptures, and jewelry exploiting the…
The carving of jadeite, the material the ancient Maya valued above gold, using a technique unique in the archive: not just the craft but the raw material's own geological source — the Motagua River Valley jadeite deposits — was completely…
The setting of small, precisely cut pieces of turquoise gemstone in mosaic fashion onto copper, brass, silver, nickel, or bronze vessels and jewelry, a relatively young Iranian art form with a documented history of roughly fifty to seventy…